Book of Common Prayer
Psalm 26
A song of David.
1 Declare my innocence, O Eternal One!
I have walked blamelessly down this path.
I placed my trust in the Eternal and have yet to stumble.
2 Put me on trial and examine me, O Eternal One!
Search me through and through—from my deepest longings to every thought that crosses my mind.
3 Your unfailing love is always before me;
I have journeyed down Your path of truth.
A great theme throughout the psalms is the experience of coming before God. This Davidic psalm affirms the integrity of the worshiper before the Lord even while pleading for God’s mercy.
4 My life is not wasted among liars;
my days are not spent among cheaters.
5 I despise every crowd intent on evil;
I do not commune with the wicked.
6 I wash my hands in the fountain of innocence
so that I might join the gathering that surrounds Your altar, O Eternal One.
7 From my soul, I will join the songs of thanksgiving;
I will sing and proclaim Your wonder and mystery.
8 Your house, home to Your glory, O Eternal One, radiates its light.
I am fixed on this place and long to be nowhere else.
9 When Your wrath pursues those who oppose You,
those swift to sin and thirsty for blood,
spare my soul and grant me life.
10 These men hold deceit in their left hands,
and in their right hands, bribery and lies.
11 But God, I have walked blamelessly down this path,
and this is my plea for redemption.
This is my cry for Your mercy.
12 Here I stand secure and confident
before all the people; I will praise the Eternal.
Psalm 28
A song of David.
1 Eternal One, I am calling out to You;
You are the foundation of my life. Please, don’t turn Your ear from me.
If You respond to my pleas with silence,
I will lose all hope like those silenced by death’s grave.
2 Listen to my voice.
You will hear me begging for Your help
With my hands lifted up in prayer,
my body turned toward Your holy home.
This Davidic psalm pleads with God to spare him and repay his enemies. It would be difficult to locate this psalm in any one event. During his life David faced many threats from different enemies; not only were these threats from outside his realm, but some of his most difficult challenges came from inside his own family.
3 I beg You; don’t punish me with the most heinous men.
They spend their days doing evil.
Even when they engage their neighbors in pleasantness,
they are scheming against them.
4 Pay them back for their deeds;
hold them accountable for their malice.
Give them what they deserve.
5 Because these are people who have no respect for You, O Eternal,
they ignore everything You have done.
So He will tear them down with His powerful hands;
never will they be built again.
6 The Eternal should be honored and revered;
He has heard my cries for help.
7 The Eternal is the source of my strength and the shield that guards me.
When I learn to rest and truly trust Him,
He sends His help. This is why my heart is singing!
I open my mouth to praise Him, and thankfulness rises as song.
8 The Eternal gives life and power to all His chosen ones;
to His anointed He is a sturdy fortress.
9 Rescue Your people, and bring prosperity to Your legacy;
may they know You as a shepherd, carrying them at all times.
Psalm 36
For the worship leader. A song of David, the Eternal’s servant.
1 Sin speaks in the depths of the soul
of those who oppose God; they listen closely to its urgings.
You’ll never see the fear of God
in their eyes,
2 For they flatter themselves—
convinced their sin will remain secret, undiscovered, and so unhated.
3 They speak words of evil and deceit.
Wisdom and goodness, they deserted long ago.
4 Even as they sleep, they are plotting mischief.
They journey along a path far from anything good,
gravitating to trouble, welcoming evil.
5 Your love, O Eternal One, towers high into the heavens.
Even the skies are lower than Your faithfulness.
6 Your justice is like the majestic mountains.
Your judgments are as deep as the oceans, and yet in Your greatness,
You, O Eternal, offer life for every person and animal.
7 Your strong love, O True God, is precious.
All people run for shelter under the shadow of Your wings.
8 In Your house, they eat and are full at Your table.
They drink from the river of Your overflowing kindness.
9 You have the fountain of life that quenches our thirst.
Your light has opened our eyes and awakened our souls.
10 May Your love continue to grow deeply in the lives of all who know You.
May Your salvation reach every heart committed to do right.
11 Give me shelter from prideful feet that hunt me down
and wicked hands that push me from Your path.
12 It is there, far away from You, that the wicked will be forced down,
face to the earth, never again returning to their feet.
Psalm 39
For the worship leader, Jeduthun.[a] A song of David.
As an individual lament, Psalm 39 grieves over the brevity of life. The superscription recalls David’s appointment of Jeduthun as one of the tabernacle’s leading musicians (1 Chronicles 16:41–42).
1 I promised, “I’ll be careful on life’s journey
not to sin with my words;
I’ll seal my lips
when wicked people are around.”
2 I kept my mouth shut;
I had nothing to say—not even anything good—
which came to grieve me more and more.
3 I felt my heart become hot inside me
as I thought on these things; a fire ignited and burned.
Then I said,
4 “Eternal One, let me understand my end
and how brief my earthly existence is;
help me realize my life is fleeting.
5 You have determined the length of my days,
and my life is nothing compared to You.
Even the longest life is only a breath.”
[pause][b]
6 In truth, each of us journeys through life like a shadow.
We busy ourselves accomplishing nothing, piling up assets we can never keep;
We can’t even know who will end up with those things.
7 In light of all this, Lord, what am I really waiting for?
You are my hope.
8 Keep me from all the wrong I would do;
don’t let the foolish laugh at me.
9 I am quiet; I keep my mouth closed
because this has come from You.
10 Take Your curse from me;
I can’t endure Your punishment.
11 You discipline us for our sins.
Like a moth, You consume everything we treasure;
it’s evident we are merely a breath.
[pause]
12 Hear me, O Eternal One;
listen to my pleading,
and don’t ignore my tears
Because I am estranged from You—
a wanderer like my fathers before me.
13 Look away from me so I might have a chance to recover my joy and smile again
before I lay this life down and am no more.
30 These are the words of Agur, son of Jakeh. An oracle of wisdom.
He says, “I am weary, God.
I am weary and spent, O God.”[a]
2 Certainly I am a stupid man, as dumb as an ox.
I don’t understand the way that most people do.
3 I have never learned wisdom,
and I have no knowledge at all of the Holy One.
4 Who has ascended into the heavens and then come back down?
Who has collected the winds in the palm of His hand?
Who has wrapped up the vast oceans in His coat?
Who has plotted the ends of the earth and then fashioned them?
What is His name?
What is His son’s name?
Do you know? Indeed, you do.
24 There are four creatures on earth that are small,
but they are very wise and we can learn from them:
25 While ants are hardly a strong species,
they work constantly to store up food during the summer;
26 While badgers are animals without many defenses,
they are wise enough to make their homes in the rocky cliffs;
27 While locusts live without a ruler,
they all know how to move in formation;
28 While a lizard is easy enough to catch in your hand,
it is shrewd enough to enter the palaces of kings.
29 There are three creatures with majesty in their stride,
no, make it four that move with grace:
30 The lion, which is the strongest of the animals,
does not back down from any other creature;
31 The strutting rooster, the male goat,
and a king as he goes out with his army.[a]
32 If you have been foolish enough to insinuate yourself in some high position
or if you have concocted some sort of evil plan,
clamp your hand tightly over your mouth;
33 For pressing down milk makes butter,
pressing your nose makes it bleed,
and pressing anger makes trouble.
3 It is time that I wrap up these thoughts to you, my brothers and sisters. Rejoice in the Lord! (I don’t mind writing these things over and over to you, as I know it keeps you safe.)
2 Watch out for the dogs—wicked workers who run in packs looking for someone to maul with their false circumcision.
Circumcision has become a flash point for the early church. Some are teaching that non-Jews have to become Jews to follow Jesus completely, including circumcision, dietary regulations, keeping weekly and annual holy days, and other Jewish practices. Since the time of Abraham, circumcision has been the mark of the covenant with Abraham’s spiritual children. Things are changing: outsiders, non-Jews, are entering into the new covenant.
Do they enter by faith alone, or is it faith plus following God’s law for Israel? Paul’s answer is clear: it is faith alone that makes Jews and outsiders right with God. So he cautions the Philippians to watch out for those who would chastise them into a false circumcision. Real followers of Jesus know that salvation doesn’t come from the blade of a knife but from His cross.
3 We are the true circumcision—those who worship God in Spirit and make our boast in Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King—so we do not rely on what we have accomplished in the flesh.
4 If any try to throw around their pedigrees to you, remember my résumé—which is more impressive than theirs. 5 I was circumcised on the eighth day—as the law prescribes—born of the nation of Israel, descended from the tribe of Benjamin. I am a Hebrew born of Hebrews; I have observed the law according to the strict piety of the Pharisees, separate from those embracing a less rigorous kind of Judaism. 6 Zealous? Yes. I ruthlessly pursued and persecuted the church. And when it comes to the righteousness required by the law, my record is spotless.
7 But whatever I used to count as my greatest accomplishments, I’ve written them off as a loss because of the Anointed One. 8 And more so, I now realize that all I gained and thought was important was nothing but yesterday’s garbage compared to knowing the Anointed Jesus my Lord. For Him I have thrown everything aside—it’s nothing but a pile of waste—so that I may gain Him. 9 When it counts, I want to be found belonging to Him, not clinging to my own righteousness based on law, but actively relying on the faithfulness of the Anointed One. This is true righteousness, supplied by God, acquired by faith. 10 I want to know Him inside and out. I want to experience the power of His resurrection and join in His suffering, shaped by His death, 11 so that I may arrive safely at the resurrection from the dead.
28 Before the sun had risen, Jesus was taken from Caiaphas to the governor’s palace. The Jewish leaders would not enter the palace because their presence in a Roman office would defile them and cause them to miss the Passover feast. Pilate, the governor, met them outside.
Now Caiaphas is high priest at this time. The sacred office he occupies has been corrupted for more than a century by Jewish collaboration with Greeks and Romans. Reformers are few, and they have been unable to cleanse the high office from its pollutants. Because of this, many Jews have stopped coming to the temple. How can God’s holy habitation on earth be pure if its primary representative is coddling the enemies of Israel? Caiaphas knows he needs friends in high places to put an end to Jesus, so he turns to Pilate, the Roman governor. It is Pilate’s job to look out for Roman interests in Judea. He is an irritable man, unnecessarily cruel and intentionally provocative. Many Jews will die on his watch. For Pilate, Jesus is just one more.
Pilate: 29 What charges do you bring against this man?
Priests and Officials: 30 If He weren’t a lawbreaker, we wouldn’t have brought Him to you.
Pilate: 31 Then judge Him yourselves, by your own law.
Jews: Our authority does not allow us to give Him the death penalty.
32 All these things were a fulfillment of the words Jesus had spoken indicating the way that He would die. 33 So Pilate reentered the governor’s palace and called for Jesus to follow him.
Pilate: Are You the King of the Jews?
Jesus: 34 Are you asking Me because you believe this is true, or have others said this about Me?
Pilate: 35 I’m not a Jew, am I? Your people, including the chief priests, have arrested You and placed You in my custody. What have You done?
Jesus: 36 My kingdom is not recognized in this world. If this were My kingdom, My servants would be fighting for My freedom. But My kingdom is not in this physical realm.
Pilate: 37 So You are a king?
Jesus: You say that I am king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the cosmos: to demonstrate the power of truth. Everyone who seeks truth hears My voice.
Pilate (to Jesus): 38 What is truth?
Pilate left Jesus to go and speak to the Jewish people.
Pilate (to the Jews): I have not found any cause for charges to be brought against this man.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.